(AN: it didn't let post 13k+ words in one chapter so i made a part 2)
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[Usage Advisory] High Sanity Strain:
Riftpetal EXE fusion nearing turbulence. Mental fatigue, hallucinations, and narrative drift are intensifying. Dream core venting is essential.
[Spirit (maxed > C): fractures spidering. Passive resistance is still active but splintering. Threshold to BROKEN within minutes.]
[Phase XI - Bloomstorm Crescendo]
[T+22:01 > T+24:00]
Ashborn skids across a canyoned boulevard, boots tearing sparks. Entire skyscrapers topple like dominoes behind him; Threk's sonic shockwave is still echoing.
HP: -650.
SP: -420.
MP: -900.
He launches back into the fray, [Riftpetal EXE] blurring between Claymore heft and Scythe grace. Every strike is both anchor and whisper, cause and uncertainty.
Vuralis shoulder-checks, fortress mass forward. His wings close, turning into leaf-bastion gauntlets.
Ashborn pivots low, [Inkveil Dance] swirling him intangible for three seconds. He slips through the wall-bastion, leaving poetic cuts that bloom thorns in reverse time.
Calix times the gap, releasing [Carnal Bloom Burst.] Blood spores detonate. Ashborn shields with [Claymore - Rift Collapse,] shattering the causal chain of her trigger. The spores bloom late, catching Mael's swarm instead.
Ashborn: "Your hive is mine!"
He threads the swarm with [Genesis Thread: Void]. They turn, mad buzzing to rip at Mael himself.
Mael hisses. Antennae whip-lashing psychic shock. Spirit stat fracture deepens. Sanity tremors: Lunavelle's voice whispers from every wasp.
[Spirit: C > C-.]
[HP: -1,100.]
[SP: -980.]
[MP: -720.]
[Phase XII - Spiral Collapse Waltz]
[T+24:01 > T+26:00]
The Apex Ten tighten their choreography: they stop attacking as individuals.
They move as a wheel of extinction.
Zara whirls in late rhythm, whip blades screeching.
Threk hums counterpoint, syncing the whips to resonant cracks.
Korrath anchors the ground: every lash Zara lands fractures into stone eruptions.
Halk poisons the fractures, converting stone shards into venom-spitting vipers.
Ashborn counters with [Hybrid Fusion - Paradox Blooming.]
Claymore + Scythe combined into a paradox strike: he slashes at both cause and fate.
Result:
Zara's whip arrives but never lands.
Threk's resonance hums but collapses into silence.
Korrath's quake occurs but deals zero impact.
Halk's vipers are born stillborn, rotting mid-screech.
Ashborn staggers, sanity cost spikes. Stardust leaks from his nose. He tastes dream-ink in his mouth.
[Spirit: C- > D+.]
[HP: -1,800.]
[SP: -1,050.]
[MP: -1,200.]
[Phase XIII - Petal Choir of Horror]
[T+25:01 > T+29:00]
Elysxa emerges from the shadows, [Witherweave Cloak] removing urgency from Ashborn's limbs. His dodge comes too late, Sylune's [Mnemonic Sigils] pin his mind in a loop of drowning.
Calix detonates grief phantoms; Halk infects his veins with neurotoxin convergence.
Ashborn's body convulses. Riftpetal EXE howls, [Inkveil Scythe Form] manifesting poetic stanzas:
"I burn fear. I sever memory. I am not broken yet."
[Poem of Severed Destiny] unleashed. Scythe arc marks five Apex Warriors, Zara, Calix, Mael, Halk, and Elysxa. Draining narrative certainty. They falter, misstepping.
But the cost, hallucinations intensify. He sees Lunavelle's corpse pinned on thorns, even though she's safe inside the [Dream Core.] His sanity fractures scream.
[Spirit: D+ > D-.]
[HP: -2,400.]
[SP: -1,320.]
[MP: -1,600.]
[Phase XIV - Brutality of the Dawnfield]
[T+29:01 > T+33:00]
Arctus descends, golden roots unfurling. [Solar Choir of the Last Bloom] ignites. Allies cannot die. Enemies' sins sing aloud Ashborn hears his own voice:
"Kill him."
His mother's command, echoing from his birth. The song drags him down.
Ashborn roars, switching to [Claymore Mode - Legend's end]. He brings the colossal blade down to Arctus's Dawfield, breaking legendary-tier buffs. Golden petals shatter, raining molten pollen.
HP drops massively. Arctus's aura burns his skin raw. Ashborn shrugs it off,
[Rage-Threading Genesis]
[Spirit: D- > E+.]
[HP: -3,500]
[SP: -1,700.]
[MP: -2,200.]
[Phase XV - Apex Synergy Horror]
[T+33:01 > T+37:00]
The Apex Ten regroup. Now they fight as one organism.
Vuralis forms bastion walls.
Korrath redirects terrain.
Mael commands swarm-thought.
Zara sets the tempo.
Halk infects through gaps.
Threk tunes vibrations.
Calix detonates corpses.
Elysxa silences his instincts.
Sylune steals his memories.
Arctus heals them all, unbreakable.
Ashborn swings [Riftpetal EXE] non-stop.
[Inkveil Dance] to parry swarm hallucinations.
[Rift Collapse] to shatter cause-and-effect chains.
[Petal Cut - Unwritten Fate] to erase prophecies.
[Echo-Loom Barrage] to unleash a storm of narrative-weighted strikes.
[Poem of Severed Destiny] to scar fates.
[Paradox Blooming] to tear synergy.
But for every cut, three wounds bloom back. For every illusion erased, five more infest his mind.
Every block shatters bones.
[Spirit: E+ > E.]
[HP: -5,000.]
[SP: -2,900.]
[MP: -3,800.]
[Phase XVI - Silverbraid Reach Annihilation]
[T+37:01 > T+42:00]
The city itself dies. Skyscrapers collapse into rivers of molten glass. Streets crack into a vine chasm. Civilians' screams end in silence.
Ashborn is half-broken, half-divine. His Spirit Stat is nearly shattered.
[5,650 / 10,650]
[Sp: 6,520 / 9,420]
MP: 8,080 / 11,880]
The Apex Ten are bloodied but not broken. They circle him like lions around a titan, wounds knitting, spores regrowing, dawnlight healing.
Ashborn's star-shaped eyes burn lavender-silver, stardust running like ink down his cheeks. His mind screams, BROKEN is near.
He raises [Riftpetal EXE.] Both forms flare at once, paradox screaming through the air.
"If this city must die...
Then it dies with me standing."
All eleven collide.
Silverbraid Reach explodes into a cathedral of roots, screams, sun, ink, and ruin,
[Spirit Status: BROKEN Threshold Approaching]
Sanity drift at 38%. [Riftpetal EXE] stability: 68%.
[Phase XVII - The BROKEN Threshold]
Ashborn staggered, drenched in blood. Eyes, nose, ears, a stream of crimson ink poured like rivers. Each swing of [Riftpetal EXE shaved his sanity thinner, and thinner, until cracks spidered across his very spirit-stat core.
The [Usage Advisory] screamed in his vision, letters fracturing mid-word:
[HIGH SANITY STRAIN: PERCEPTION BREAK NEAR.]
He didn't care.
He couldn't care.
If he stopped swinging, he was dead. And if he died.
Lunavelle would be alone...
[The Apex Ten - True Bloodforms]
One by one, the ten surged into their true forms.
Vuralis became a living Bastion-tree, wings fused into ironwood cathedrals, every feather a fortress rampart.
Korrath's body split into layered tectonic plates, gravity wells orbiting him like moons.
Halk's serpents fused into a crown hydra of venomous bloom-fangs, dripping entropy.
Zara unraveled, limbs elongating into an infinite lash-maze of crimson thorns.
Calix bloomed into a fungal goddess of bone and blood, her spores singing with thousands of dead voices.
Mael dissolved into a dream swarm constellation, billions of wasps forming a titanic insect shadow.
Threk expanded into a coral-sonic titan, backflowers humming resonance at apocalyptic pitch.
Elysxa shed flesh entirely, becoming a veil of nothing woven from mourning petals.
Sylune grew into a spore-archive colossus, thousands of memories orbiting her like burning stars.
Arctus unfurled divine solar wings, roots burning like auroras, a miniature star throbbing in his chest.
Their auroras tore through storm clouds like ten aurora pillars. Silver, gold, scarlet, violet, emerald, obsidian, and amber, they lit the world like a false pantheon.
Ashborn's star-shaped lavender eyes blurred with tears and madness. His fingers tore open, skin split along wrists, bloodied threads dripping down the hilt of [Riftpetal EXE.] Every wing twisted bone, yet still he swung.
[HP: 2,800 / 10,650]
[MP: 1,700 / 9,420]
[MP: 3,900 / 11,880] (saved)
His [Cosmic Regenerative Factor - Tier II] barely kept him alive, skin stitched only to split again under strain.
He whispered:
"If I die... she will be alone."
[Phase XVIII - Storm of Beasts]
Five Apex Warriors dashed first. Vuralis, Halk, Zara, Mael, and Threk. Each moving at inhuman speeds, their steps in harmony, their movements like one vast predator.
Ashborn dodges by threads alone. [Void Thread] pulsed automatically, shifting him a heartbeat late but just enough. His scythe blurred, cutting through lash, fang, resonance.
The other five attacked simultaneously. Calix detonated corpses, Sylune erased memories of his weapon, Elysxa struck with phantom incisions, Korrath tried to bury him alive, and Arctus descended like judgment.
Together, they were a monster, one organism of ruin.
Ashborn's answer: swing.
Every form, every mode, every cosmic ounce he had left.
[Claymore - Rift Collapse] shattered cause-and-effect, ripping Zara's whip-strike out of sequence.
[Scythe - Inkveil Dance] Ghosted through Mael's swarm as poetic stanzas cut wasps into verses of nothing.
[Hybrid - Echo-Loom Barrage] six slashes, each carrying narrative weights (loneliness, grief, rage, hope, despair, love). The city screamed as buildings fell in mirrored sequence.
[Ultimate - Poem of Severed Destiny]
Scythe carved across Calix and Sylune, bleeding their certainty. They stumbled, spores losing rhythm.
Yet for every dodge, he was grazed
For every cut, he was bitten.
[HP: -900 (1,900 remaining)]
[SP: -500 (1,200 remaining)]
[MP: -200 (3,700 remaining)
[Phase XIX - The Horror Waltz]
The battle became a choreography of brutality.
Vuralis's wings slammed down like fortresses, forcing Ashborn into a canyon of leaf-metal walls.
Zara lashed from above, each whip snapping in layered rhythm.
Halk's hydra-crown struck his blind side, venom mist clawing lungs.
Korrath stomped the canyon flat, spikes tearing from the ground.
Mael's swarm became a living ocean, buzzing in dream-logic tongues.
Ashborn danced through it, his [Ecliptic Wyrm Form] twisting hips, rolling shoulders, every cut an orbit of survival.
Claymore smash shattering Halk's hydra-fang.
Scythe sweep cutting Mael's swarm into fragments.
Hybrid strike breaks Zara's whip mid-flight.
But every clash broke him more.
Hands twisted apart. Fingers snapped. Ribs cracked. Stardust blood filled his mouth, dripped down his chin in rivers.
[HP: -700 (1,200 remaining)]
[SP: -400 (800 remaining)
[MP: -500 (3,200 remaining)]
[Phase XX - The Collapse of Silverbraid Reach]
The city was unrecognizable. Entire districts sank beneath roots, spores, and shattered skyscrapers. Lightning fell sideways. The ground no longer obeyed gravity.
Ashborn staggered through flaming ruins
Half-blind. His [Spirit stat] is nearly BROKEN. Sanity drift flooded him, he saw Lunavelle in every reflection. Dying. Screaming. Reaching.
"If I stop swinging, I die. If I die, she is alone."
The Apex Ten hunted him across the ruins. Every time he tried to hide, they found him. Every time he tried to rest, they struck.
Hundreds of clashes erupted through burning streets, collapsing towers, and even sky-battles across shattered auroras. Their movements were no longer just battle, they were a horrifying ballet of predator and prey,
Of titan and lone dragon.
Ashborn's lavender star-eyes flickered. His vision blurred.
His body twisted.
Cracks spidered across his spirit like glass.
[HP: 1,200 > 800 > 400...]
[SP: 800 > 500 > 200...]
[MP: 3,200 > 2,800...]
Still-
He swung [Riftpetal EXE.]
And still-
They came.
[Phase XXI - Spirit: BROKEN]
Ashborn staggered forward, his vision flickering between reality and hallucination.
[HP: 400. SP: 200. MP: 2,800.] His star-shaped lavender eyes bled light, smeared with tears and stardust blood.
"Four hundred health... two hundred stamina... but I still have mana... two thousand, eight hundred... I have to make every swing count."
His voice was hoarse, cracked, almost hollow.
Ashborn wiped blood from his eyes and nose, then raised [Riftpetal EXE]. His Cosmic, Space, Light, Entropy, and Dream-Wrought Flame Affinities surged into the weapon. The air warped with chaotic brilliance, half-divine, half-broken nightmare.
[Cosmic Core: Stage I - Genesis Spiral Node] pulsed, braiding dimensional threads into his blood.
[Core Amplification] ignited, multiplying his raw stats into unstable spikes.
[Override Mode] engage: Ashborn's veins glowed silver, bones humming with collapsing gravity.
[Cosmic Core: Evolution Stage II - Harmonic Prism Nexus] split open in his chest, twin orbs orbiting the third dark code mode. Reality bent around him.
[Core Amplification Level 2] supercharged him, 2.5x boost on stamina and mana regeneration.
[Genesis Fragment - Fully Synced] activated.
Ashborn crushed the fragment into his chest, its proto-crystalline seed dissolving into his bloodstream. [Quantum Resurgence] triggered.
For ten minutes his stats doubled. His aura swelled like a star collapsing inward.
[Phase XXII - The vanishing Step]
He took one step forward.
And disappeared.
No sound. No displacement. Only the tearing of logic.
The Apex Ten froze for a fraction of a second, something that hadn't happened in hours.
Ashborn reappeared inside their circle.
[Riftpetal EXE] flared with both forms simultaneously, impossible scythe and claymore swinging in paradox arcs.
The choreography broke into brutal chaos.
Vuralis raised fortress wings, Ashborn's claymore crushed through one, tearing bark-steel ribs apart, then scythe cut rewrote the shield into petals that stabbed his own back.
Korrath stomped with [Planetbreaker] force, Ashborn warped gravity, redirecting the quake into Threk's chest, his resonance nodes imploding.
Halk slithered with serpent-crown, Ashborn impaled him mid-strike, flames of Dream-Wrought Chrono-Fire erupting,
burning not his flesh but his fate-bound poisons.
Zara's lash wrapped his wrist but Ashborn pulled it taut and severed it with [Inkveil Dance,] poetic stanzas bleeding from her flesh like cut verses.
Calix detonated 300 corpses, Ashborn rewrote the cause-and-effect: the dead do not explode, they kneel, for one moment her phantoms bowed to him.
[HP: -200 (200 left)]
[SP: -100 (100 left)]
[MP: -400 (2,400 left)]
Mael's swarm constellation dove, billions of dream-wasps biting. Ashborn swept with claymore [Rift Collapse] shattered the dream-thread hive mind, swarms turning on each other in screeching confusion.
Elysxa phased into his shadow, whispering death. He swung scythe low, cutting his own doubt, and the blade connected with her intangible body, dragging her back into solidity.
Sylune rewrote his memory of Lunavelle, erasing her face, Ashborn screamed, blood and sanity bursting from his mouth.
He forced [Genesis Thread: Echo-Loom] into his heart, binding the storyweight of love back into himself, searing Sylune with his resolve.
Arctus descended in full dawnflare, halo burning through rain, and Ashborn countered with [Poem of Severed Destiny] scythe carving his judgment into weakness.
Sunlight fractured, vines turned inward.
[HP: -100 (100 left)]
[SP: -100 (0 left)]
[MP: -700 (1,700 left)]
[Phase XXIII - The Brutality of a Dying Star.]
Ashborn fought like a beast cornered in eternity. His sanity was gone, spirit shattered to BROKEN, but his body moved with dragon-instinct and blade-memory.
[Claymore Heaviness] his blows broke spines, crushed wings, shattered sigils.
[Scythe fluidity] His sweeps erased outcomes, bled prophecy, unmade certainty.
[Hybrid Paradox] His fusion strikes tore not just bloodied but the rhythm of their unison.
Blood streamed from his fingers; the weapon nearly slipped. Every swing twisted ligaments apart. His hands snapped, healed, snapped again.
The Apex Ten screamed together, monster and god and parasite in unison. They struck from every side, spores detonating, gravity collapsing, sound fracturing, memory dissolving.
And Ashborn...
Still swung.
[HP: 100 > 60 > 20.]
[SP: 0.]
[MP: 1,700 > 1,200 > 800.]
[Phase XXIV - The Last Script]
The battlefield was no longer a city, it was a graveyard of skyscraper bones, glowing fungi, bleeding aurora, and molten light.
Ashborn staggered, [Riftpetal EXE] trembling in his grasp. His body cracked apart, ribs like broken glass, sanity leaking like ink.
He whispered again, hoarse, lips torn and bleeding:
"If I die... she will be alone."
The weapon flared, ink-petals and crystalline stars colliding, screaming in harmony.
One final chain.
[Rift Collapse] to break the cause of their unison.
[Inkveil Dance] to ghost through the swarm.
[Petal Cut - Unwritten Fate] to erase the prophecy of his death.
[Legend's End] to nullify Arctus' divine shield.
[Poem of Severed Destiny] to scar them all.
[Paradox Blooming] to unmake their unity.
[Echo-Loom Barrage] to deliver six wounds,
Hope, rage, despair, loneliness, grief, love.
The Apex Ten staggered, shrieking in their monstrous forms. Their perfect harmony was shattered.
But Ashborn's body fell to its knees.
[HP: 20 > 0.]
[Spirit: BROKEN.]
His stellar heartbeat flickered, pulsing weak light. His last thought wasn't of victory.
It was Lunavelle's sleeping face.
And with his final breath, he whispered into the storm:
"Never alone."
[Astral Cocoon Shift - Auto-Trigger] engaged.
Ashborn's broken body wrapped in silver threads, freezing him in space-time for 3 seconds... buying him one last chance to rise.
The [Astral Cocoon Shift] ended, his body hitting the ground slightly healed,
Ashborn knelt, breathing shallow, Aetherion: [Riftpetal EXE] lodged into fractured concrete beside him, his arms twitching, slick with cosmic blood. His star-shaped lavender eyes were half-glazed, blood streaming like broken static. The illusions of his mother and kin loomed beside him again, whispering in soft, hollow tones:
"Just rest. Let go. Come home..."
His body leaned, wavering until.
A symphony of descending power ruptured the heavens.
Ten pillars of divine-light inked with spectral poetry crashed down like celestial executioners. Each one carved a crater in the debris-filled. Each one carved a crater in the debris-filled street. The impact shattered the twisted remnants of Silverbraid's skyline.
Ashborn's broken eyes flicked up just enough to lock onto her silhouette...
"Lady Shirohana Hozuki..."
She emerged with the calm of an executioner and the presence of a queen. Her ink-black armor glimmered, cracked faintly with battle resonance. Her katana, a shimmering script-blade, hummed against the twisted spiritual gravity, her foxes Kōgetsu and Mangetsu, growling low at her flanks.
"Back to the living, Lionheart," she said evenly.
Keigan Varn, cracked his runic fists, glowing like molten brands, "Yo! Who the hell thought they could dogpile our favorite lunatic without permission?!"
Kaela Hoshimi, raised a hand, her sigils activating above the shattered skyline, painting the world in a grid of burning celestial law. "Judgment begins."
Teysa Winfall zipped past in a glimmer of emerald ripplelight, already logging all battlefield anomalies and sending emergency signals to the Ninth Verse.
The ten stood, flawless and immediate. Not a word more spoken between them. They moved.
[Battle Phase Initiation; Arc Sanctum Elite vs Apex Legion]
[All 10 Apex Warriors] charged again, now adapting, mutating, evolving further as they launched an omega-tier synchronized assault. 'Within's' biomass algorithms had fully updated their strategies to account for Arc Sanctum signatures.
But Shirohana's squad didn't react, they predicted.
[Shirohana + Ashborn - Twin Anchor Formation]
Shirohana leapt in and slashed her blade mid-air.
"[Edict: Let No Law Be Twisted Here!]"
Her haiku bound the laws of the battlefield.
The moment Zara lashed her vine limbs toward Ashborn again, she was severed mid-motion, cut out of reality for exactly 17 syllables worth of space.
Ashborn's scythe spun in kind, [Poem of Severed Destiny] bleeding into space and cleaving Mael's incoming swarm down to silence.
The two stood back-to-back. Ashborn's sanity bled like vapor from his eyes. But for one moment.
"You're late..."
"You're alive."
[Keigan + Fennik Crossgale + Kaela - Frontline Disruption Division]
Keigan thundered forward, absorbing Korrath's [Seismic Swallow] with a bellow.
"STOMP HARDER, TREE BOY!"
His Crushmark tattoos detonated point-blank, vaporizing chunks of Korrath's lower limbs.
Fennik blurred into visibility just as Threk's [Sonic Bloomquake] activated, [Crossline Lash!] He drew speed-sigils across the air, forcing Threk's charge into an instant U-turn that made the beetle-Titan shatter his own wings.
Kaela, floating overhead, whispered into the golden sigils:
"False light shall not flourish."
Her [Solar Judicator] struck the craters,
Setting Elysxa's invisible frame ablaze as she tried to phase-ambush Ellion.
[Ellion Nairn + Irin Vehlmire + Miraen Duskstar - Supression Net]
Ellion set down the [Sanctum Grid,] and for the first time in hours, Ashborn's system core stopped bleeding heat.
"Restoration channeling - Activated."
Every particle of dust became a healing rune. His ink-threads glowed.
Irin stalked ahead and whispered.
"No more stories."
He activated [Deadpage Zone]. Vuralis, Calix, and Sylune all blinked, unable to cast. Their evolutionary logic... turned static.
Miraen seized the moment. She activated [Stellar Anchor Crossframe], folding the city block into an anti-escape prison. No teleports. No warps. Everyone is locked in.
[Selyra Noxveil + Nio Rainsilk + Teysa Winfall - Psychological Erasure Wing]
Selyra appeared behind Halk, whispering an enemy's memory into a physical dagger.
"Remember your first failure? Here, keep it."
The knife dissolved his upper serpent-arm in a scream.
Nio stepped up behind her, trying to air.
"[System Dive: Gloss Rewrite] Engaged."
All enemy AOE buffs rewrote themselves into debuffs, each spike of mutation began to implode instead.
Teysa flitted around the field, replaying recorded moments of Ashborn's swings via [Narrative Ripple] confusing the Apex's reaction speed by tricking time.
Shirohana's voice pierced all;
"Ashborn Lionheart... you're not alone anymore."
Ashborn knelt, his body broken, but when he looked up...
The [Lionheart Blessing] pulsed behind Shirohana's voice, echoing into his ribs.
[Lionheart's Echo Resurgence - Activated] Soul Anchor Imminent...
His [Genesis Thread] snapped alive.
"[Narrative Drift Trigger: Family-Bonded Rebirth]"
He stood. The [Riftpetal EXE] hummed, brighter than ever.
Shirohana whispered.
"Your story is mine now."
---
Ashborn, ragged and bleeding from dozens of wounds, his vision blurred and body cracked by prolonged use of [Riftpetal EXE] could barely lift his sword. Aetherion's mythic resonance throbbed in his hands like a second heartbeat, warning him of neural collapse. Sanity cracks splitting across his perception, hallucinating flashes of his family again.
"Ashborn, fall back."
Shirohana's voice didn't ask, it commanded. And he obeyed.
She caught him without faltering. His head dipped toward her shoulder, she steadied him like a black blossom against entropy's wind.
"My prince," she murmured again so low, only his fractured mind heard it.
Shirohana whispered a sigil-bound phrase and nine threads of ink exploded out from her, weaving through the crater-riddled city. Her squad dropped into synchronized formation:
Teysa blinked through narrative echoes, shouting into the collapsing wind:
"Echoestride! Set Points One through Six!"
Reality splintered as she rewound the squad's previous placements, placing them in all directions at once. A perfect hexagonal trap.
Miraen raised her arms, summoning the [Stellar Anchor Crossframe] locking the spatial dimension around Vuralis, Calix, and Threk. No teleportation. No phasing. No vertical retreat.
"It's over, mutation trash," Miraen smirked,
Light fracturing around her body.
Keigan leapt with rune-powered legs, crashing down on Korrath's exchanging fist with monolithic force.
Ash-runes ignited with every punch, sealing kinetic feedback loops.
"You like earth!? I'll bury you in it"
BAM. BAM. BAM!
With each impact, Korrath's reinforced hide cracked, blood-sap hissing out like magma.
Simultaneously, Fennik Crossgale slashed kinetic lines in mid-air.
"Crossgale Lash!"
Cutting Mael's psychic swarm mid-flight, redirecting it into Calix's own decay spores, corrupting them.
Ellion Nairn, though nervous, pressed both palms into a collapsed building's rubble.
"Living Script Vow - Blessing Matrix!"
Healing sigils ignited beneath Ashborn's collapsed form and Shirohana's feet, restoring 800 HP and stabilizing Ashborn's [Dream-Logic Interface] temporarily.
Behind them, Selyra appeared without warning behind Zara whispering:
"Your memory? Mine now."
A psychic echo flared. Zara screamed, her vision turned into a spinning haiku about defeat, her whip striking only phantoms.
Kaela summoned the [Stellar Court Grid] her halo shining like a second sun. Every movement of the Apex Warriors was now judged and punished.
Each motion made inside the grid caused radiant sigils to erupt beneath their feet.
Flames of divine justice burned out mutation spores before they could bloom.
Meanwhile, Irin stepped into range and activated his [Deadpage Zone]
"No story survives here."
Arctus, raised his hand to summon solar petals-
Nothing happened.
His divine field shattered. His solar aura was silenced. The battlefield tilted in favor of Arc Sanctum.
Ashborn, still half-insane, was whispering to himself, Aetherion pulsed violently in his hand shifting between [Inkveil Scythe] and [Mythos Claymore] the hallucinations of his mother flickered.
"You're not real. I won't listen. I... I'm not done."
"Echo-Loom Barrage: Execute."
[Genesis Thread] spun around him like a blooming constellation of blades and ink-petals.
[Hybrid Form - Paradox Blooming] surged.
Fate. Causality. Poetry.
Every slash bent meaning. One cut erased a sporemancer's name. Another rewrote an Apex's memory of how to fight. He fought between Ashborn and Not-Ashborn, attacking from two timelines.
Ashborn collided with Vuralis.
CLANG.
Then Mael.
SLASH.
Then three more at once. He burned.
Blood. Sanity. Thread.
[HP: 10]
[SP: 5]
[MP: 0]
And yet-
"This is what ot means to carve my own name..."
Cracks splintered across every warrior's command core.
Arctus burned.
Calix was thread-bound by Shirohana's petal-laced law.
Mael's nightmare insects turned on him.
Korrath couldn't move inside Irin's anti-narrative bubble.
Elysxa's mist was nullified by Ellion's glyph net.
Each Apex warrior, realizing for the first time, they were outnumbered... and outwritten.
"Fallback. Mutation Spiral Collapse Initiated."
"We'll devour him another day," hissed Calix.
"When he's alone again."
One by one, they blinked away into evolutionary cocoons, escaping in beams of corrupted biomass.
[Aftermath - Silence in Silverbraid]
The storm's eye widened. Rain now fell sideways. Reality was still glitching, but it was quiet.
Ashborn fell again, his arms limp. Shirohana knelt beside him, cradling his blood-slick head against her chest. Kōgetsu and Mangetsu whimpered, guarding the perimeter.
Lunavelle finally appeared again, flickering in a faint shimmer near his chest, her hands pressed against his heart.
"We're here, Ashy... I'm here. Please come back."
Shirohana didn't speak.
She simply held him tighter.
And her squad, ten war-born orphans stood around them in a perfect circle.
Ready for the next wave.
Or for nothing.
But unmoving all the same.
---
---
---
[Location: Silverbraid Reach - Shattered Civic Nexus.
Time: 5:30 PM.
Event: Aftermath of "Ashborn + Arc Sanctum squad - Full Counteroffensive"
Condition: 100% Civilian Loss, 100% Urban Collapse, Spiritual Gravity Disintegration.
Weather: Static Thunderstorm - Broken lightning flickering in loops, silence between rumbles like a held breath.]
---
Ashborn had finally collapsed, his body broken, spirit broken, mind spiraling deep into the chaotic fog of [Riftpetal EXE's] toll. Sanity fractures left his dream-core trembling. The storm danced on, whispering fragmented echoes through the ruins of Silverbraid Reach.
His limbs no longer moved, his vision flickered and then...
Warmth.
His head rested gently in the hollow of Shirohana Hozuki's arms, pulled close to her chest. Her embrace was firm, but it wasn't a soldier's, it was that of someone who had waited far too long to protect him properly. Her ink-black armor shifted slightly, rain beading along the surface, but she didn't care. Her cheek pressed gently against his crown.
"You fought alone for too long, my prince,"
She whispered again, almost in reverence.
"Never again."
Ashborn's expression, half-conscious, twitching from internal strain finally relaxed.
Lunavelle's tiny celestial wings flickered and let out a cry that cracked with emotional reverb. She curled her tiny glowing body along Ashborn's cheek, tears falling in glowing beads down his jaw. Her light shimmered dimly, exhausted from the soul-link but her resolve never faltered.
"You promised you wouldn't leave me again, you dummy..."
"So I'll stay right here. Right here. Forever if I have to..."
She pressed her tiny palms against his skin, trying to calm the raging dream-core storm inside his soul. Threads of astral light curled around them both, binding their spiritual pulses tightly.
The squad slowly approached, each of them surrounding Ashborn and Shirohana with careful steps, drawn not just by duty, but awe.
They had just seen something... inhuman.
A lone warrior who stood alone against ten mutation-class Apex horrors and didn't just survive. He held them off.
Keigan Varn, arms folded, body still humming with kinetic runes' heat, exhaled sharply.
"That little guy's a cosmic juggernaut... and he was half dead when we got here."
He knelt beside Ashborn's feet, glancing between Shirohana and the boy. His usual grin was gone.
Selyra Noxveil said nothing.
She stared in silence. Her eyes glinted with a mixture of recognition and dread as if seeing an echo from her worst memories. She watched Lunavelle closely.
"That light... they weren't fighting alone."
Fennik Crossgale let out a whistle as he crouched, elbows on his knees.
"No wonder the air feels like it's alive. This guy fought like a storybook nightmare... and it felt like he wasn't even done yet."
He tapped his boots against fractured ground, watching the rain bounce off Ashborn's unconscious body.
Kaela Hoshimi walked forward with a grim expression, her goldlight armor cracked from earlier resonance clashes. She didn't kneel but her head dipped respectfully.
"If fate truly breathes... then he was meant to bear something far beyond the weight of kingdoms."
Ellion Nairn, wide-eyed and trembling slightly, placed a fresh sanctum glyph beneath Ashborn's spine.
"Healing field steady... stabilizing internal essence. H-he should be safe now..."
He smiled softly toward Lunavelle, who gave a weak nod without speaking.
Irin Vehlmire simply turned to Shirohana and murmured:
"You called him 'my prince.' That wasn't a metaphor, was it?"
Shirohana didn't answer. But her silence was an answer.
Miraen Duskstar crossed her arms and looked to the sky, the shattered auroras still weaving through storm clouds like a broken constellation.
"When he wakes... this city won't be the same. None of us will be."
Nio Rainsilk, eyes lit with system glyphs, whispering in shock:
"His system signature's... undefined. It's built on paradox layers. I've never seen anything like this."
He glanced at Ashborn's nearly-completed Genesis Thread, and for a second, even his mind skipped.
"He's not just a warrior. He's... a rewrite."
Teysa Winfall simply smiled,
Kneeling beside Lunavelle and brushing a few locks of her silver-violet hair.
"You kept him grounded, huh? You're amazing too, little starlight."
Lunavelle sniffed, then nodded.
"He gets lost in himself sometimes...
someone has to pull him back..."
The storm trembled above them as Shirohana tightened her embrace around Ashborn's head. Her Paperfox Familiars, Kōgetsu and Mangetsu, circled protectively. She whispered a soft command:
"Petal Edict: Shelter."
A barrier of ink-etched plum blossoms unfurled above them, blocking out thunder, rain, distortion, and even grief.
Her lips lowered to Ashborn's ear, and only he could hear her final whisper before unconsciousness took him fully:
"You did enough, Ashborn... I'll hold the sword now."
Ashborn, held in the arms of Shirohana, Lunavelle beside him, and the Arc Sanctum Squad forming an unbreakable ring around them.
The city burned.
But he was alive.
He was never truly alone.
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To be Continued...
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Vol.1 ends here. Thanks for everyone who reads this. Even though it's not much. I really enjoyed writing this vol even though it gave me a lot of headaches. Since i have to fix the grammar, add . And , by myself. I really had to fix and search the meaning behind a lot of words like (inertia.) Since i didn't know it was related to Newton's first law of motion.
I tried making the fights as choreography as possible. I didn't want it to make Ashborn too overpowered, and that was my first mistake. It took me a lot of headaches to find a way to counter Ashborn powers, For example. [Revenant Null-Crown] he's a good counter i could make for Ashborn. But i have different plans for him just like every character. Anyways...
Thank you all for reading this...